Chương 132: 132：The Crossbow Harassment

However. With a violent flick of his wrist, Buck whipped his gore-drenched lance to the side, shaking off the blood. He didn't show a single, microscopic trace of greed for kills, nor any desire to linger in the brawl. Buck understood their fundamental weakness perfectly: if they actually became bogged down in close-quarters melee, human arm strength and physique were still utterly outmatched by these elite Orc brutes.

"Retract lances! No entanglement! Break contact and follow me!" WROOOOOO! A sharp, piercing bone-whistle echoed across the mire. Buck's [Advanced Cavalry Commander] talent detonated to its absolute limits. The ninety-plus Greywater Warg-riders who had just smashed through the enemy lines heard the whistle and reacted with terrifying synchronization. Yanking their reins, they instantly pivoted their mounts!

They carved a flawless, sweeping arc across the mud, completely ignoring the infuriated Orcs screaming behind them. Leveraging the absolute, peerless mobility of their Wargs, they retreated like a gust of wind, slipping right out the other side of the chaotic formation! Splash! Splash! Mud flew wildly into the air.

When Centurion Gruul finally managed to corral his remaining seventy-odd surviving Orc riders, he raised his massive battleaxe, fully prepared to plunge into a brutal, grinding collision of flesh and steel. But as he looked ahead, his jaw practically unhinged in sheer disbelief. That mysterious human cavalry unit—the very same one that had just delivered a devastating, apocalyptic strike to his vanguard—had already pulled back to an open stretch of mud a full seventy paces away.

They had casually rearranged themselves into a flawless, half-moon skirmisher formation! They hit us... and just ran?!

"Cowards! Despicable circus freaks!" Looking at the mangled corpses of his brothers littering the mud, Gruul's fury burned so violently his eyes felt ready to bleed. He raised his heavy flail-axe, pointing the bloodstained weapon dead at Buck in the distance.

"Tear them apart! Do not let them escape! BITE ONTO THEM!" However, before the Orcs could clamp their legs around their Wargs and initiate a counter-charge... Seventy paces away. Buck sat perfectly straight in his saddle. With a casual, almost mocking backhand motion, he hooked his massive three-meter lance onto the rest ring of his saddle. He issued a single, cold command. Ninety-two human Warg-riders simultaneously unhooked the strange, compact mechanisms strapped to their chests.

It was the masterpiece forged by Hobgoblin Luger's own hands: the [Goblin Repeating Crossbow]!

"Harassing fire! Free-shoot!" CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK! The dense, terrifying mechanical snap of released bowstrings instantly replaced the bloodthirsty roars of a cavalry charge. A suffocating, pitch-black swarm of two hundred and seventy-six short-range steel bolts blotted out the sky, diving straight into the faces of the Orc Warg Cavalry just as they attempted to accelerate! CLANG! PING! THWACK!

Many bolts slammed against the Orc riders' thick Blackiron shoulder guards and chest plates, ricocheting off in showers of useless sparks. They were, after all, lightweight Goblin hand-crossbows. They fundamentally lacked the terrifying, armor-shredding penetrative power of Geared Heavy Ballistas.

"HAHAHAHA! You call this an attack?! It's not even enough to scratch an itch! You think this pathetic strength can kill me?!" Gruul roared with manic, mocking laughter as he casually swatted a bolt away from his face. But... Buck's tactical intent was never to kill the heavily armored Orcs. SQUELCH! SQUELCH! Those supposedly "low-damage" bolts bypassed the riders entirely, raining mercilessly onto the utterly unarmored, unprotected flesh of the Orcs' Wargs!

Even if the bolts only penetrated half an inch into their hides... it was enough. These hyper-aggressive, easily enraged magical beasts instantly felt the agonizing sting of steel! AWOOOOO! An Orc Warg took a bolt directly above its right eye. Letting out a harrowing, agonizing shriek, it completely ignored its rider's frantic tugging on the reins. Driven mad by the pain, it reared violently onto its hind legs, brutally bucking the massive Orc straight off its back and into the acidic mud!

Several other Wargs, blinded by the sudden, stinging agony, descended into absolute, uncontrollable frenzy. Baring their blood-stained fangs, they violently snapped their jaws shut on the necks of the allied Wargs standing right next to them! Complete and total chaos. The Orcs possessed the monstrous brute strength to uproot trees, but that empty strength was utterly useless when the mounts they relied upon descended into agonizing madness and refused to obey a single command.

"Steady! Control these damned beasts!" Gruul slammed a brutal, heavy fist directly into the skull of his own mount, attempting to use concussive pain to force it back to its senses. But the surrounding pack had already devolved into a boiling pot of chaos, violently slamming into and tearing at one another. Some incredibly unlucky Orcs were thrown from their saddles, their boots caught in the stirrups, being dragged helplessly through the acidic mud by their panicked beasts.

And a safe, perfectly calculated distance away? Buck's men sat with god-like composure. They casually cranked their winches and snapped fresh three-shot magazines into their crossbows. SWISH! SWISH! SWISH! Yet another relentless, suffocating wave of steel bolts washed over the mire. The once-terrifying, imposing Orc formation had been violently reduced to nothing more than static target practice, forced to stand in the mud and eat arrows.

"CHASE THEM! AAGGHH! CHARGE AND SLAUGHTER THEM ALL!" Gruul was so furious smoke practically billowed from his ears. Clamping his thick legs desperately around his Warg's belly, he violently spurred the beast forward. But to his absolute, crushing despair... Because his Wargs were injured, panicked, and hopelessly bottlenecked by their own chaotic formation, their acceleration was as slow as a crawling snail. Meanwhile, the human cavalry opposite them?

The absolute micro-second the Orcs managed to shamble ten paces forward, the humans smoothly turned their mounts and casually, effortlessly trotted exactly ten paces backward. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The enemy advances, we retreat. The enemy halts, we harass. In all the countless brutal wars Gruul had fought in his lifetime, he had never, ever experienced such an overwhelmingly suffocating, humiliating, and impotent battle!

Finally, Gruul couldn't take the psychological torture of this impotent rage a single second longer. He violently yanked his reins, forcing a halt and stopping the few remaining Orc survivors who were still trying to execute a suicidal, limping pursuit. The Orc Centurion, drenched head-to-toe in the blood of his own kin, rode his mount alone, advancing a dozen paces ahead of his broken line. BANG! He violently slammed his massive, fifty-pound flail-axe into a protruding rock.

His face was so grotesquely twisted by pure hatred it barely looked Orcish anymore. His crimson eyes locked dead onto the commander of the human cavalry. Reaching up, Gruul brutally ripped the iron crest-plate from his own chest, throwing it violently into the mud. Then, he raised his massive right arm, pointing a thick, scarred finger directly at Buck.

"ROOOOOAAAAARRRR!!" A roar like a detonating thunderclap shattered the lingering mist. Using the most primal, ancient body language of his race, Gruul violently pounded his own massive chest with both fists. He pointed at Buck, and then pointed heavily at the empty patch of mud directly between them! One on one. A Mak'gora. A death duel!

"Commander!" A Greywater Warg-rider sitting beside Buck raised his repeating crossbow, lowering his voice:"That idiot just walked right out into the open. Just say the word, and we'll turn him into a pincushion."

"Lower your crossbows." Buck raised a single hand. Although he couldn't understand the exact guttural syllables of the Orc's roar, as a former high-ranking Knight Commander, how could he possibly misunderstand the blatant, bloodthirsty provocation of a duel? Under the current overwhelming tactical advantage, having his men execute the enemy commander via firing squad was undoubtedly the safest, most logical option. Buck had every right to refuse. However.

Buck's gaze drifted past Gruul, landing on the dozens of surviving Orcs standing behind him. Although battered, humiliated, and broken, the feral, beastly ferocity had not yet been entirely extinguished from their eyes. Lord Soren had taught them an absolute truth: Killing the body is merely butcher's work. Executing the heart destroys the soul! If they simply shot Gruul to death right now, these cornered, desperate Orcs would instantly scatter in a frenzied panic.

In the chaos, a few stragglers might slip through the net and reach Lone Cliff. If he wanted to utterly, permanently extinguish every single shred of fighting spirit within these beasts, the absolute best method... was to face them directly. To crush the spine of their strongest champion right in the domain they were most fiercely proud of! More importantly... Ever since arriving at Greywater Village, the long-dormant fire within Buck's chest had been completely reignited.

He desperately needed a visceral, glorious, life-or-death slaughter to wash away the cowardly betrayals and political filth that had plagued the first thirty years of his life!

"All units, hold position and maintain perimeter vigilance." Buck reached back. With a sharp, ringing SCHWING!, the massive three-meter Blackiron lance was drawn once more. Step. Step. Buck rode out entirely alone. Lance resting easily in his grip, he spurred his Alpha Warg, slowly parting from the Greywater formation. He came to a halt exactly twenty paces away from Gruul.

"I'll admit, you're a warrior with a pair between your legs." Gruul sneered maliciously, bearing a mouthful of rotting yellow fangs as he squeezed out a sentence in broken, heavily-accented Common:"I am going to chop your head off... and kick it like a ball!" Before the final syllable even left his mouth. BOOM! The mud beneath Gruul's feet exploded as if a literal bomb had detonated beneath it! This towering, two-meter behemoth didn't spur his mount forward.

Instead, relying on the sheer, apocalyptic explosive power of his thighs, he launched his entire massive body directly off the back of his Warg! Gripping the thick wooden haft of his flail-axe with both hands, he soared through the air, descending like a demonic god of war to smash the weapon directly down upon Buck's skull! The sheer violence of this strike was incomprehensible. The hundred-pound axe head compressed the air so violently it shrieked like a falling artillery shell.

If a fully armored Royal Knight raised a tower shield to block this, both man and horse would be instantly, violently hammered into a paste of bone and blood.

"DIE!" The axe blade was less than five feet from the crown of Buck's head. The suffocating shadow of absolute death had already completely engulfed him. Buck did not raise his lance to block. Under that level of monstrous kinetic impact, the Blackiron shaft would snap instantly. [Beast Affinity]! In this microsecond between life and death, Buck's talent flared. He felt every single microscopic twitch of his Alpha Warg's muscle fibers.

Driven by absolute synchronicity, the massive beast beneath him violently lunged forward—exactly half a step! It was a fatal, reality-altering half-step! Suspended in mid-air, having committed every single ounce of his kinetic force into the downward cleave, Gruul was completely locked into his trajectory. Because of that half-step deviation, the apocalyptic heavy axe merely scraped past Buck's left shoulder, plummeting uselessly downward. CRASH!

The massive flail-axe slammed brutally into the mire, burying more than half the blade deep into the solid mud beneath the puddles! Due to the catastrophic over-commitment of his swing hitting dead earth, Gruul's upper body violently lurched, causing him to stumble heavily forward. His massive, armored chest was instantly, entirely exposed. It was a fleeting, microsecond opening. And Buck seized that fatal flaw in an absolute death-grip.